Taptoi-tour China September 20 - 30 2006

text: Marieke van der Ven / Peter Kuit - pictures: Taptoi
Read our weblog (in Dutch)


The members of Taptoi:

 

 

The gentlemen: Frederic Knapczyk, the modest French man out of The Hague, Holland, and Bart Brolsma, the animal out of Haarlem, Holland, when they're tapdancing together, you can imagine two strong animals. They head for each other and start their fight.

 

Isabel Berenos, our beautiful Isabel, highly physically gifted and a good tap dancer with force.
Christien Booij, her great pleasure in Taptoi, in tap and in the people, was stimulating all of us.

Marijke de Braal, beautiful tap dancer and a great tour guide for us.

 

Renée Hanjoel, she's tap dancing with so much power that not every one could keep up with her. After Taptoi she became famous in Brabant (Holland).

Saskia Holthuijsen, she worked hard and with success. Her pleasure on stage was smashing. 

 

Lisette de Koning, our weblog manager, after tapping a great Taptoi performance, she flew to the computer to put new pictures on our weblog.

 

Suzanna Pezo, just in time she arranged our great Taptoi t-shirts; a hard worker with a very elegant way of moving.

 

Katja Terpstra, a good tap dancer with a formerly blank face that's now sparkling on stage.

 

Anthe Tervoort, together with Stefanie, Anthe has helped us organizing Taptoi until... she got a great job and had to graduate. A very secure, serious and hyper tap dancer.

 

 

Stefanie Meijer, our producer in training who's now an experienced producer. The amount of work she did for and with us, is huge. In the meantime she rehearsed and tapdanced very good. Thank you very much, Stefanie.
 

The organisation Tap dance duo Tafel 9:

 

Peter Kuit, our leader, our choreographer, our writer, our artist, our scientist, the one who inspires us. 

 

 

Marieke van der Ven, also our leader, our computer expert, our choreographer of the wooden shoe dance, our Chinese negotiator.

 

 

 

 

The tour has been a great success. In every way the group did well. The tapdance performances were great, the energy was good, everybody worked very hard. It's a group of inspiring and nice people.

 

 

Not the buildings nor the environment, but the Chinese people were a culture shock to us. In China they sell whitening cream in stead of self tanning cream we have in Holland. The more white your skin, the better. Marines searching for crabs on a bridge that's flooded by high tide.

 

 

The traffic is a chaos. In Beijing they drive where they want to. Most of the times we thought there was no place for an extra car. And keeping distance as we do in Holland, is not their way of driving. In Jihnzou they always honk when they pass another car. Also bikes, horses, boats and trains are means of transport. The train has narrow aisles and tiny seats with straight backs. Not suitable for the tall Dutch people. On the contrary the platforms are huge.

 

 

It was hard communcating with the Chinese. Sometimes we had to argue to go on with a performance. Before we could do our wooden shoes dance, we had to talk with many managers. Negotiating is the way of communicating. Some members were better in bargaining than others.

 

Our guide, Mary, had a hard time with the Dutch Taptoi, like we had with her. She could speak English, but really understanding each other was difficult. The endless asking for permission for every little change in the schedule to her manager and his or her manager and his or her manager (and so on), was time consuming and exhausting. With a lot of miming and drawing we tried to explain our questions. 

 

 

 

 

When we were interviewed by the Chinese television, our guide in Jihnzou more or less told us what to answer. And with all these soldiers in the audience, we did as we were told.

 

 

 

Unfortunately we didn´t see Chinese dragon dancers. But we did see a lot of things that we think of as Chinese. Although our guide rather showed us the touristic parts of Beijing, we did also see other parts of Beijing. When we told her that we liked Jihnzou so much, because it was less stressfull and less modenised than Beijing, she answered that she hoped Jihnzou would become very touristic soon. Unnecessary to say, we don´t hope so.

 

Chinese dragon in The forbidden city

 

Detail wall painting in The forbidden city

 

Chinese performance in Jihnzou - Mao theatre

 

The most fancy and delicious Chinese food we´ve had

 

Away with authentic China, long live the future:

 

 

The hosts of the performances reminded us of the Eurovision Songfestival:

 

 

The performances were highlights of our program. At the end of the tour we were getting tired because of our busy schedule, but we still did a good job on stage. We gained a lot of experience on all the different stages: cracks in the floor, nails sticking out, unstable (we even ruined the foundation of one stage), rough or slippery. In spite of these circumstances we were a hit. 

 

 

 

 

The copying of the Chinese is endless. They did  choreographies of Riverdance, as well as dances of 42nd Street (as were the Americans).  We didn't see an original Chinese tap dance. They learn the copying at their mother's knee. 

 

 

 

The cultural attaché of the Dutch embassy explained that in the Chinese education system a student has to make a perfect copy of what the teacher learns him. 

 

From left to right: the tap dance teacher of the Yan Ling School; Peter Kuit; Cultural attaché Dutch embassy Marit Maij; 
Marieke van der Ven; principal Yan Ling School and Qing Qing assistent of the Dutch embassy

 

Luckily we found a few tap dance students at the Yan Ling Dance School willing to improvise!

 

 

 

We did not see an original tap dance choreography except for our own Taptoi choreography of Peter Kuit. And also the choreography for wooden shoes and tapshoes by Marieke van der Ven was unique. No group made a choreography for the walking part of the parade, except of course Taptoi!

 

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